The Fox (53 page)

He
was
the Brotherhood now. He sat here in this house, served by strangers who looked at him with sidelong admiration, and some apprehension. Both nights he’d had his pick of the handsome young women who strolled by just to look at him. All of them laughing, all of them willing. The first one brought a basket of fresh fruits of amazing variety: he had counted eight different types of grape alone.
Just don’t ask their names,
Jeje had said, walking by on the arm of a young man nearly as handsome as Tau, only dark. The last he’d seen of her was that valedictory grin.

And he hadn’t asked any names. He got up in the morning from that vast bedroom downstairs, and when he walked to the bath the pretty young woman with whom he had shared fruit, wine, and his body smiled and left. No demands, no expectations. A night of pleasure, of passion, given not because she liked Inda as a person, or liked his looks, but because he had commanded a successful battle against their hated foe—he knew it as well as she did.

“Meaning. Power,” he murmured, now in Marlovan. Odd, both words carried slightly different connotations from the same words in Iascan.

“Life, death, and power,” Fox said, breathing fast. Smiling in challenge. “That’s all there is. Why not enjoy them?”

Inda turned away, leaving the book—and the question of the future—behind him. “Let’s get something to drink.”

“Liquor?” Fox asked derisively. “Even I don’t drink just after dawn.”

“No. Coffee. It’s the best I’ve ever had. I think it’s better than Sartoran, even. I want some now, and I’m going to fill the galley with bags of it when we go.”

Three weeks passed, marked by intermittent storms. One morning the sky cleared after a thunderstorm, and there in the bay beyond the pier rode a single ship with a high, curved prow like the head of a swan, its masts tall, the slackened, drying sails square. And black.

Ramis of the
Knife
was here.

Chapter Three

ON the morning after his conversation with Fox, Inda had walked down to the shore behind the dock, weapons in hand, to start the daily drills.

Many of his crew were reluctant to rise early from their pleasures just to struggle and sweat, but drill had become a part of their lives. The fight against the Brotherhood had imbued most of them with the conviction that pleasure would not last beyond their share of the pay Elgar had handed out once they left Lindeth. Either they’d go cruising again or someone would come after them. Inevitable as rain. So their lives depended on readiness.

And then there were those who came out because Fox entered their comfortable pleasure houses, strong-arming them out of bed without ceremony or pity.

So for three weeks Inda’s crew reported for daily drill on the broad beach before the pier to which their ships were moored.

The morning they spotted the
Knife
anchored out in the bay the sailors stood about in uneasy groups, fingering their weapons and staring, until Inda’s sharp whistle—and Fox’s freely dealt buffets—brought them into line to begin.

A boat from the
Knife
glided in. A scar-faced man leaped out, and while his boat crew rowed back he remained on the beach to observe the sword and staff drills.

A riff of self-consciousness tightened muscles, sharpened focus, and those of Inda’s crew who had been slow or reluctant now put forth all their effort.

Ramis One-Eye watched, while everyone watched him. There wasn’t much to look at beyond the spectacular purple scarring down one side of his face, a black patch covering that eye. His brown hair was neatly clubbed, his height was above medium, his clothing a plain linen shirt under a long vest belted at the hip and loose trousers stuffed into boots. His manner, the easy control of his movements, all indicated to their practiced eyes one with lifelong weapons training, though he only wore a knife in a sheath at his black-weave belt.

Inda saw that his crew was more distracted than focused and gave up. “Tomorrow a double,” he said, wondering if he’d be alive to lead it.

The scar-faced man lifted a hand toward Pirate House, and Inda fell into step beside him.

The brick road leading up was scarcely wider than a path; there were no horses on the island, only goats, cows, bulls, dogs, and cats. Plump felines trotted along fences and balconies, each wearing a collar of sweetly tinkling bells, for apparently the mice were pets as well. Everyone walked, or was pulled in little flower-decorated carts by fat, well-groomed goats with flowers decorating their halters.

As the two passed by in silence, the windows and doors of the shops and houses crowded with curious folk; only the local dogs and cats ignored them, indifferent to the matters of humans.

Everywhere flowers bloomed, and music—Inda had discovered that the islanders made music day and night, with any excuse—wound complicated melodies through the cool breezes.

Ramis did not speak during that long walk. Inda spotted Tau lounging in the doorway of a tiny house, watching with unsmiling intensity. How had he gotten there so fast?

Then Dasta appeared at the top of the hill, still breathing hard as he casually whittled some pale wood. He had armed himself for battle—all his old mates had, apparently running up one of the back streets. They eyed Ramis with open speculation.

Inda and Ramis reached the house. Ramis said in Iascan, “We will go up onto the balcony so that your followers will see that you are safe.”

Inda flushed, though he didn’t know why.

Ramis glanced over as they walked inside. His good eye was hazel in color, its expression wry and acute. “You do not seem to appreciate,” he said, “just how rare is freely given loyalty. I suspect you’ve had it all your life.”

“Loyalty,” Inda repeated, leading the way upstairs. Fox’s voice came back:
There is nothing but life, death, and power
.

Ramis sounded amused. “What else would you call it?”

Inda feinted with Fox’s credo: “There is nothing but life, death, and power.”

Ramis laughed as they entered the chart room.

Inda flushed again.

“I forget how young you are,” Ramis said. “Well, when I was young I understood the world, too. Until the world ended.” His voice had not changed; the scarred face, his reputation, were far more convincing than a dramatic alteration in tone ever could be.

Inda’s neck tightened with a heightened sense of danger. “Are you in truth a Norsundrian mage?”

“What will you really know about me if I say yes?”

“That if you come from Norsunder you cannot have fought the Brotherhood out of any moral conviction. Therefore you could do to me and my crew the same thing you did to Marshig and his Brotherhood captains, if it suited your convenience. And so I should be suspect of your motives for this meeting.”

Ramis’ good eye narrowed in amusement. “But would you not have come to those same conclusions had I said no?”

“Dhalshev of Freedom Island was right,” Inda exclaimed, exasperated. “You do answer questions with questions. Here’s one that you can answer plainly. How did you cause those ships to vanish like that?”

Ramis opened one well-shaped, rough-palmed hand, then clasped it with its mate behind his back. “I am watched by idle eyes from the Garden of the Twelve.” He shifted briefly to the archaic Sartoran when he named Norsunder’s power center. His accent was startling, almost singsong. “The former chief of the Brotherhood attracted those eyes by a degree of treachery achieved by very few. I was merely the agent of time and place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the Brotherhood of Blood was in the midst of a noisy and vicious struggle for precedence, noisy enough and vicious enough to catch and entertain those idle eyes I spoke of. The necessity of meeting your coming fleet was the only thing unifying them. Ganan Marshig planned it all carefully, sending enough of his worst enemies within his fleet against you for you to destroy one another so that he could emerge and finish everyone off on both sides.”

“Then I was right,” Inda exclaimed. “If I could have taken him—”

Ramis raised a hand, and Inda fell silent. “The Venn also knew it,” Ramis said. “For they had a spy on board Marshig’s ship. This is why they rode there in the north, watching. Their plan was to prevent any of your fleet from escaping Marshig, until I drove them off.”

So if Marshig hadn’t gotten him, the Venn would have. Inda felt sick. “Why did you not let them finish us? Was that not entertaining enough for Norsunder?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Ramis said. “Too easy.”

There was no understanding his motivations, Inda thought. Or those of the mysterious inhabitants of the Garden of the Twelve.

Ramis said, “As for what I did, it was time for what you might think of as a demonstration of consequences—not just to the pirates, but to the Venn. I’m sure you will agree it was most effective.”

Inda’s breath huffed out on his “Yes.” He breathed out again, trying to ease the tightness in his neck. “And so . . . Marshig, and the Venn spy as well, and everyone else on board those ships have been taken into the heart of Norsunder? ”

“Oh, not the heart,” Ramis said, smiling a little. “Marshig and the remainder of his fleet are in one of the border-lands . . . we can call them holding areas, far from the heart—though even ‘heart’ is a misnomer for a place beyond time and physical space. Those who command merely have use for him, no interest.”

Idle eyes. Archaic Sartoran. The casual power of some unknown hand ripping a curtain between this world and Norsunder vast enough to swallow six capital ships. Inda felt very much like a scrub again.

Ramis glanced at the table, his one brow lifting. “Ah, you saved that, I see.”

The oath book. “I was reading it.” Inda looked at the amusement still deepening the corners of Ramis’ mouth, and decided not to add anything about power or interest. He didn’t think the one-eyed man would be impressed.

“Did you know that Gasthjanju, the one who wrote the long records, got faint at the sight of his own blood? Used to line up his followers to donate theirs when the poetic urge seized him.” Ramis picked up the book, hefted it, and then with a flick of his strong wrist, he spun it into the glowing remains of the fire.

Inda gasped. Ramis’ single eye met Inda’s, his smile gone. “Don’t tell me you had limited your vision to perpetuating this absurdity?” He pointed at the curling pages, now burning in blue and gold flames. “The legends grown around the Brotherhood will no doubt produce fleets of greedy or disaffected people in the future, and they’ll fall to death and defeat after fighting their way to a pinnacle of stupidity. Is that really how you wish to squander your life?” Before Inda could say anything, he indicated the glass doors. “Come. Show yourself on the balcony. They are all watching.”

Inda stepped through the doors, looking down. There was Tau, now with a half-hidden bow team behind him. And Jeje too, also armed with a bow, black-haired Gillor next to her, hefting a cutlass. Fox was there as well, at the intersection with the side street, his fighting scarf hiding his red hair, his knives not in their sheaths but in his hands, visible as cold steel gleamed up the inside of his forearms as he leaned casually in an arched doorway watching both entrances. No doubt with bow teams hidden out of sight but ready to attack either entrance on a signal.

Inda backed into the room, observing, “Fox wants a fight.”

The man didn’t respond. Instead, he closed the door-length shutters, then flicked something silver through the air. Inda caught it. It turned out to be a piece of metal, thicker than most coins, with carving on both sides. “Say ‘
Knife
.’ ”

Inda said it, and a black wind ripped sight from his eyes, burned away skin and bone, then restored them, all in the space of a heartbeat. He staggered, his vision clearing, to discover he was not in Pirate House but standing on the deck of a gently rocking ship. His entire body tingled unpleasantly, though the sensation faded fast.

Forward curved the high prow of a Venn ship instead of the angled bowsprit of southern vessels.

He was aboard the
Knife
.

Sailors moved about, ignoring him. Inda stared around in amazement, then faced Ramis. “So that’s how Ryala Pim vanished so quickly!” And frowned at the memory of the shipowner’s daughter accusing him of piracy and theft after the loss of the last of the Pim trade ships.

Ramis gestured toward the silver disc Inda gripped in his fingers. “Transfer token.” Ramis gave Inda a slight smile. “For sale everywhere but at the west end of your continent. ”

Inda rubbed his forehead, trying to press away the last of the transfer reaction. “Expensive?”

“Very.”

“And leave you feeling like a mountain fell on you.”

Ramis gave a silent laugh. Behind him, Ghost Island rose from the deep blue of the water, its mountain crowned by cloud.

Inda sighed. “Are there really ghosts there?”

“I thought you knew what was real and what was not?” Ramis retorted. But not cruelly. He moved aft to the binnacle; Inda was distracted by the sight of a real Venn whipstaff— what they called a koldar—instead of the wheel common to all ships of the south. This straight spar was as tall as the two mariners standing at it, both attentive despite the ship being at anchor.

Ramis retrieved a glass and moved to the rail, which was pale gold oak carved with a pattern of leaves. Inda looked around again. The
Knife
was beautifully made and scrupulously clean. “Look,” Ramis said, holding out the glass.

“I did when I first arrived,” Inda said.

“You did not expect to see anything. Look again. Do not tell your mind what it is to see.”

Inda did not question him. Somewhat apprehensively he leaned against the rail, raised the glass, and swept that coastline once again. He viewed white sand gently molded by wind and rain, and ferny plants, and glistening rock with striations of many colors.